mick laBriola

Richard Quentin Laird (February 5, 1941 – July 4, 2021) was an Irish musician, best known as the bassist and a founding member of the jazz fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra, with which he performed from 1971 to 1973.

Laird was born in Dublin on 5 February 1941 to a musical family. His mother played the piano in a variety of styles and his father played the ukulele; Laird started playing both instruments when he was three. At around five years of age, Laird started formal tuition in the guitar and piano, and he had already started to read sheet music. He soon quit the piano as he did not perform well, which led him to take up painting and drawing. At twelve, Laird began lessons in Spanish guitar, but his teacher used books that he felt were too difficult, so he quit. He then discovered jazz from his mother, who bought her son a pair of drum brushes and made him play along to records.

Vincent Peter Colaiuta (born February 5, 1956) is an American drummer known for his technical mastery who has worked as a session musician in many genres. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2014. Colaiuta has won one Grammy Award and has been nominated twice. Since the late 1970s, he has recorded and toured with Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, and Sting, among many other appearances in the studio and in concert.

Colaiuta was given his first drum kit when he was seven. He took to it naturally, with little instruction. When he was fourteen, the school band teacher gave him a book that taught him some of the basics. Buddy Richwas his favorite drummer until he heard the album Ego by Tony Williams, an event that changed his life. Colaiuta was also listening to organ groups, notably Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Don Patterson.

While a student at Berklee College of Music, when jazz fusion was on the rise, he listened to and admired Alphonse Mouzon and Billy Cobham.

After leaving school, he played local gigs in Boston. He joined a brief tour organized by Al Kooper, then worked in California on an album by Christopher Morris, which Kooper was producing. Although he returned to Boston, Colaiuta was drawn back to California by friends. He took the bus from Boston to Los Angeles during the Great Blizzard of 1978.

William Allen Mays (born February 5, 1944), known professionally as Bill Mays, is an American jazzpianist from Sacramento, California.

Mays came from a musical family and at the age of 15 became interested in jazz at an Earl Hines concert.

From 1969 to the early 1980s Mays worked as a studio session musician in Los Angeles. He has been an accompanist to singers Al Jarreau, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Dionne Warwick, and also worked with artists such as Don Ellis, Mel Lewis, Barry Manilow, Shelly Manne, Bob Mintzer, Red Mitchell, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bobby Shew, Sonny Stitt, Paul Winter, Phil Woods and Frank Zappa.

John Stubblefield (February 4, 1945 – July 4, 2005) was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, and oboist. Stubblefield was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He studied music at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians with Muhal Richard Abrams in Chicago before moving to New York City in 1971.

Joe Beard (b. Feb. 4, 1938) is Rochester’s legendary blues guitarist and vocalist. He has many times toured the United States as well as Europe and has sat in with Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and his idol John Lee Hooker.

Jutta Hipp (February 4, 1925 – April 7, 2003) was a jazz pianist and composer. Born in Leipzig during the Weimar Republic, Hipp initially listened to jazz in secret, as it was not approved of by the Nazi authorities. After World War II, she became a refugee, often lacking food and other necessities. By the early 1950s, she was a touring pianist and soon led her own bands. Critic Leonard Feather heard Hipp perform in Germany in 1954, recorded her, and organized her move to the United States the following year. Club and festival appearances soon followed, as did album releases.

For reasons that are unclear, Hipp’s last recording was in 1956. She started working in a clothing factory, and ultimately cut herself off from the music world. She remained in the United States, and worked for the clothing company for 35 years.

John Watson Jr. (February 3, 1935 – May 17, 1996 Houston, TX), known professionally as Johnny “Guitar” Watson, was an American musician. A flamboyant showman and electric guitarist in the style of T-Bone Walker, his recording career spanned forty years, and encompassed rhythm and blues, funk and soul music.

Watson recorded throughout the 1950s and 1960s with some success. His 1954 instrumental “Space Guitar” was the first of his recordings to showcase his electric guitar playing. Watson’s creative reinvention in the 1970s with funk overtones, saw Watson have hits with “Ain’t That a Bitch” and “Superman Lover”. His highest charting single was 1977’s “A Real Mother for Ya”.

Lillian Hardin Armstrong (February 3, 1898 – August 27, 1971 Memphis, TN) was an American jazzpianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader. She was the second wife of Louis Armstrong, with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s.

Her compositions include “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”, “Don’t Jive Me”, “Two Deuces”, “Knee Drops”, “Doin’ the Suzie-Q”, “Just for a Thrill” (which was a hit when revived by Ray Charles in 1959), “Clip Joint”, and “Bad Boy” (a hit for Ringo Starr in 1978). Armstrong was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014.